One of the big challenges when I go food shopping has always been to find good eggs. By good eggs, I mean eggs with hard shells and rich orange yolks. The problem in the U.S. is that there are very few places where you can reliably find chicken eggs that meet these basic standards. The egg shelves in most supermarkets are dominated by eggs with thin shells and pale yellow yolks–what I would call junk eggs.
One of the reasons I love to visit Europe is that you can reliably find the kind of eggs I crave. In supermarkets and food stores of all kinds, they’re unrefrigerated in egg cartons, available for sale individually or by the dozen.
But I’m not in Europe most of the time, I’m in the U.S.
And even when I go to farmers markets, and the farmers selling eggs reassure me their chickens are on pasture, I often find that once I get home, the eggs look and taste like the factory-produced eggs. My theory is that most of these farmers are back-yard hobbyists or cattle farmers who keep a few chickens for extra cash, and who keep their chickens in coops surrounded by dirt areas, without grass.
Then, about a year ago, I found the eggs I was looking for in the U.S. They were in Whole Foods, and they came from a large producer: Vital Farms. All the eggs are labeled “Pasture-raised,” whether they are “organic”, “restorative”, or “true blues heirloom” eggs.
Vital Farms is essentially a contractor, with hundreds of small-farm suppliers. The name of the farm that produced your eggs is on the egg carton, and you can search it out on the company’s web site, and see videos of the chickens on pasture. The company talks about ethical treatment of its animals, and its employees. And a couple times when I’ve entered reports on social media that a few Vital Farms eggs weren’t up to their usual standards, I’ve received personal replies that suggested there would be followup to ensure the suppliers conform to the company’s high egg production standards.
I know such stuff sounds hokey, especially coming from a corporate producer that is publicly held. But I presume the farm suppliers are being adequately compensated, since they keep turning out high-quality eggs. Eggs, after all, are full of important nutrients, if the chickens are well fed and cared for.
The eggs aren’t cheap, though they don’t seem to me to be significantly more than the mass-produced junk eggs that are promised as “cage free” and even “organic.”
I just hope Vital Farms can keep it up. There are good signs—they’ve been around since 2007 and have been growing steadily since. But the stock over the last year has tanked, from about $50 a share to $10. Financial reports suggest that the company’s stock has been a victim of the commodity economy in which it operates, which has seen big rises in fuel and feed costs. Maybe a good time to buy in? In the meantime, they keep producing wonderful eggs.
Frying up a couple of Vital Farms pastured eggs
**
Propublica, the independent nonprofit news provider, has a lengthy profile of Mark McAfee and his Raw Farm dairy, called “The Milkman”. It begins by quoting McAfee that he diverts raw milk found to contain pathogens into cheese-making operations, since cheese must be aged at least 60 days, which he claims kills any pathogens. Yuck! The piece goes downhill from there.
No matter how you feel about the benefits of raw milk, the notion of re-using tainted milk to make other foods isn’t very inviting, and may not be safe. Later in the article, McAfee disavows such special recycling of tainted milk.
The article goes into some detail about the dairy’s record of seemingly chronic outbreaks; it quotes Mary Martin, whose son Christopher was seriously sickened with ecoli O157:H7 back I 2008 after drinking the dairy’s milk.
The article also highlights the wide support Raw Dairy has from its large base of California customers, along with the wide support it seems to have accumulated within the California and national political establishments.
As a hit-job, I guess it does what it’s supposed to do. But it’s also as misleading as most of the articles that have come out over the last 20 years about the growing popularity of raw milk in that it strongly suggests that illnesses from one or a few farms mean that raw milk is inherently unsafe. It fails to acknowledge that there are dozens and dozens of dairies around America, Canada, and Europe that produce and sell safe raw milk year after year, without incident.
The article also fails to do any analysis of CDC data on raw milk illnesses. In the article’s defense, such data has become increasingly difficult to access, since the CDC has stopped doing even the most cursory compilations of the sort it did a decade and more ago. I’m not sure if the CDC is trying to prevent info showing a drop in illnesses from raw milk, or an increase. It doesn’t really matter; it just seems to be against the use of hard data to assess safety.
So basically, there’s some interesting history on the raw milk movement that launched in California in the late 1990s, and sad exploration of Mark McAfee’s sometimes delusional behavior, but overall, another wasted opportunity to seriously explore the realities of raw milk safety.
David,
“Delusional”…quite a choice of words?
It comes with the territory. Attack the person, label the person and their progress and deny the science. The raw milk markets are growing for all raw milk farmers because consumers know their own truth.
Annie lied to me. The ProPublica piece is a hit job in its tone and twisted content. Annie told me one thing and then did another.
In my world I spend a great deal of time with PhDs at various universities. They share with me that one of their greatest challenges they have is “translation of their research into meaningful useful progress for mankind”. Every time these researchers find something important, they are suppressed and personally attacked. That is the nature of change and discovery. The status quo hates change and refuses to adapt for the benefit of humanity. Instead…profits and status quo win as they violently object to new information.
In California that paradigm is very much alive. There is a big push to approve HPP as an alternative to heat pasteurization. That’s not me pushing…that comes from people advocating for protecting BIOACTIVES in raw milk. Why the interest in HPP ( High Pressure Processing)? It does not heat milk. The HPP process protects perhaps 60-70% of the bioactives found in raw milk while killing bacteria. These bioactives and their powerful health benefits are well studied ( Cornell 2021 Tian Lin et al ) but all are lost with pasteurization.
The ProPublica story is a hit job on me personally. Nearly everything I said was twisted into a narrative to fit their anti-raw milk hit piece. I am a humanitarian and embrace leading edge science and apply that science for the good of all people.
I have never spoken with or met RFK. After listening or reading the ProPublica piece you would tend to think we go jogging every morning.
Annie promised me a balanced piece answering, “why consumers demand raw milk and how we produce it safety”. She also said she would ask Dr. Lucy about bioactives lost in processing of milk. Annie did not write that story. Instead, she tried her best to paint me as a cult leader that placed profits over people and somehow dismiss illness as a side effect of progress. HOW WRONG SHE IS! She lied as she dismissed hours of me speaking about the status of American health and how nutrition has been disregarded, as pharma profits thrive, as more people get sick and die.
Yes…I am passionate.
Yes… I am driven.
But I am ethical, truthful and moral to my core.
Absolutely every claim or medical statement I have ever made is backed by PUBMED research.
These are the slings and arrows suffered by pioneering and daring to stand up…and speak-up to do good for humanity.
10 kids die every day in the USA from Asthma…let that sink in. (NIH CDC Data).
Kids that drink raw milk see their asthma lessen and resolve. Eczema is resolved with raw milk. So are colds and ear infections. This matches exactly the studies performed in the EU ( PUBMED). For this I get attacked.
“Delusional”…is not the word I would use to describe a person with a passion to do something good to prevent 10 kids from dying every day.
Delusional is the word I would use to describe those that standby and do nothing or those that criticize those that do!
David…you need to pick your side.
Mark, I used that term reluctantly. But the Propublica piece had you making troubling statements, recounting situations so differently from others. Like your recollection that Chris Martin was eating McDonald’s burgers and watching cartoons after coming off intubation. Both Chris and his mother vehemently deny it happened, and it’s difficult to imagine someone who was so critically ill behaving that way.
Or this: “It was a typical McAfee defense. Throughout our conversation, he never lost his composure, even when discussing outbreaks. Instead, he calmly dismissed the government’s methodology, explaining that it was counting cases of “standard diarrhea,” which he said have “no claims for illness,” as they could be managed with “good hydration and plenty of good bone broths and electrolytes and stuff.”
He also seized on instances when the government could not identify an outbreak strain in his products, but instead found it in samples of farm water and cow feces or drew ties to his farm using genetic sequencing or interviews with patients — practices epidemiologists routinely rely upon. McAfee held that none of this was smoking-gun proof that his farm directly caused outbreaks. Instead, such episodes seemed to reinforce his perception that he was climbing a mountain alone, battling institutions that were already biased against raw milk before hearing his case.”
Now, if you are saying you were misquoted, that’s one thing. But I don’t think you are saying this. You are denying the standards of food safety that you sign up for when you decide to sell food to the public. It’s not a matter of me taking sides, it’s trying to figure out why you so often are in this situation of denying that people are getting sick from your milk and cheese, when there is convincing evidence of a connection.
Thank you! I no longer trust David Gumpert. My family & I were members at the Hershberger Farm. I support Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s MAGA.
“I am ethical, truthful, and moral to my core…”
—-> In our best SNL/Linda Richmand voice: “Organic Pastures was neither organic nor involved pastures… Discuss!!!”
I am not going to fuel this negative divisive dialogue. She lied repeatedly and misrepresented facts. She has a strong anti-raw milk bias with an agenda.
I could spend an hour explaining each and every misstatement she made. I was misquoted and she even misquoted government data. She is a liar with an agenda. I don’t say that lightly.
As to the Martin event 20 years ago, our legally binding settlement precludes any discussion by all parties.
My focus is on delivering delicious, safe, tested, BIOACTIVE rich whole raw milk to thankful consumers that come from all walks of life and all political parties.
Stop with the nonsense Mark. The only thing we cannot discuss is the amount the kids received in the settlement. It is impossible for you to tell the truth.
But Mark can talk about Chris eating hamburgers…,
David,
This was published in 2022.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/epidemiology-and-infection/article/foodborne-illness-outbreaks-linked-to-unpasteurised-milk-and-relationship-to-changes-in-state-laws-united-states-19982018/4822109E69DDAB37E92CAAB41AB1CC0F
Signs of a Habitual Liar
There are several recognisable patterns that distinguish a habitual liar from someone who occasionally tells a white lie.
1. They lie even when the truth would serve them better. The habit overrides logic.
2. Stories change or evolve when questioned. Details shift between tellings.
3. They minimise or dismiss concerns when caught. The lie is brushed off rather than acknowledged.
4. They blame others or deflect accountability. Responsibility rarely lands on them.
5. A persuasive, charming initial impression. Habitual liars are often very likeable on first meeting.
6. Inconsistency between words and actions. What they say and what they do diverge.
7. They appear calm, not anxious. Unlike compulsive liars, they do not show visible distress when lying.
8. They justify lying as “necessary” or “harmless.” The internal narrative protects the behaviour.
When several of these patterns persist across months or years, habitual lying is the most likely explanation.
What Causes Habitual Lying?
The pattern almost always has roots rather than a single trigger. Several factors typically combine.
Learned behaviour is the most common driver. If lying worked in childhood — avoided punishment, won attention, smoothed conflict — the pattern continues into adulthood. Low self-esteem and fear of rejection or failure push some people to construct a more impressive version of themselves. Reduced empathy or a lack of concern for the consequences of lies on others makes the behaviour easier to sustain. Personality traits in the narcissistic or antisocial range can include chronic dishonesty. Environment matters too — a family where dishonesty went unchallenged normalizes the habit. Habitual lying differs from compulsive lying, which is more anxiety-driven.
David, when it comes to healthy eggs or the “perfect egg” as you suggest there are varying perspectives just as there are with raw milk and many other foods. I reject government certified medical bureaucrats who attempt to convince the public that their healthy and safe food protocols are the be all and end all of truth. In fact, their so-called food safety position/protocols are riddled with ambiguity and contradictions and as such I cannot take them or anyone that attempts to defend those food safety claims seriously. Add to that, their brazen attitude to mandate their point of view on the public in my opinion, is ample reason to hold them and their agenda in contempt.
Mark is not so much “denying” but rather questioning the way in which those food safety standards that he “signed up for” are implemented. He is attempting to placate two incompatible positions that are clearly at odds with each other. In other words, as I previously stated, “he’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t”…
As far as Mark being “delusional”, it certainly takes someone with a committed resolve in order to continue to deal with the indoctrinated germaphobes that have a self-righteous hate on for him and the raw milk he is attempting to make available to the public. Indeed, that is likely more then enough reason to arouse ones paranoia.
Mark, HPP (High-Pressure Processing) is certainly not a living whole food. HPP milk is merely a foolhardy attempt to placate those who believe that raw milk is the typhoid Mary of the food industry.
Ken, you say you “reject government certified medical bureaucrats who attempt to convince the public that their healthy and safe food protocols are the be all and end all of truth.” The problem for someone like Mark, who sells food to the public via food retail outlets, is that he has accepted the authority of the regulations overseen and enforced by the ‘certified medical bureaucrats’ as a prerequisite of offering his products for sale to the public. If he were to sell his milk and cheese privately, such as through a cow share, it might be a different story. But so long as he wants access to the public marketplace, he has to abide by the rules of that marketplace; among the rules is that your food can’t make people sick, and if it does, you need to engage in recalls and shutdowns, and other actions till your food is deemed safe.
David, Yes Mark “has accepted the authority of the regulations overseen and enforced by the ‘certified medical bureaucrats’ as a prerequisite of offering his products for sale to the public”. Does that ensure however that their rules/regulations are administered in a just, accurate and equitable way? It certainly appears that they are imposing their regulatory authority in a way to harass Mark and other raw milk producers by drawing conclusions based on misleading facts and dishonest assumptions meant, in some cases, to cause financial harm.
In going out of his way to test his own milk daily and using independent labs Mark has infringed on and challenged their authority. Health bureaucrats because they are driven by need to justify their existence may very well take exception to being held accountable for their actions, hence the tendency to be spiteful and vindictive. I don’t believe it matters to health bureaucrats if a milk producer sells his or her raw milk via retail or private sale… they seem to be more then willing to exercise their supercilious authority over both.
sorry to see this forum is now focussed on Mark McAffee’s character, more than the evidence that certain individuals were made ill from raw milk from Organic Pastures / Raw Farm.
the maxim is : ‘the nature of evidence is that it can be tested; if it cannot be tested, it isn’t evidence. Mr McAffee not only has the right but the duty to his team, to put the govt. allegations to the test. From what I see at this distance, the evidentiary case against Raw Farm is far from conclusive that all the instances were from raw milk, at all.
having met the man in person a few times, I hold him in high regard. The proposition that he is a “liar” is out of the question. He is indeed “climbing a mountain more-or-less all by himself’.
at the URL below, one may read what AI gave me re: the recall of SILK (C) “soy milk” a couple of years ago.
That episode demonstrated perfectly the argument that when a giant processing plant goes wrong, it does a lot more harm than illness coming out of a local raw milk dairy. 3 deaths / 20 confirmed infections traced to the faux “milk” / many hospitalizations.
Lately, we see here in Canada, notice re the class action lawsuit against the producer/ distributor. Damage include ” … for psychological harm as a result thereof …”. Of course the name Mary Martin McGonigle came to mind.
https://www.google.com/search?q=Danone+recall+illness+death+from+Silk+Canada+milk&sca_esv=6f8dc8e269075555&sxsrf=APpeQntvxualiFGFtDAeaFs1163ctlJwHA%3A1782508368415&source=hp&ei=UOs-at6mFtTE0PEPkbiEiQQ&iflsig=ABILxe8AAAAAaj75YMlwGZZLG-KI7ZMdqQtnVVWJZz1m&ved=0ahUKEwjejuyQ6aWVAxVUIjQIHREcIUEQ4dUDCD4&uact=5&oq=Danone+recall+illness+death+from+Silk+Canada+milk&gs_lp=Egdnd3Mtd2l6IjFEYW5vbmUgcmVjYWxsIGlsbG5lc3MgZGVhdGggZnJvbSBTaWxrIENhbmFkYSBtaWxrMgUQIRifBUimmgNQAFiGhANwAHgAkAEAmAGMAaABiiyqAQQ2Ni40uAEDyAEA-AEBmAJGoALwLMICBBAjGCfCAgsQABiABBiKBRiRAsICCxAuGIAEGLEDGIMBwgIOEC4YgAQYsQMYxwEY0QPCAg4QABiABBiKBRixAxiDAcICCxAAGIAEGLEDGIMBwgILEC4YgAQYigUYkQLCAg4QLhiABBiKBRixAxiDAcICBRAAGIAEwgIFEC4YgATCAggQLhiABBixA8ICChAAGIAEGBQYhwLCAg4QLhjHARixAxjRAxiABMICCBAAGIAEGLEDwgILEC4YgAQYxwEY0QPCAgYQABgWGB7CAgsQABiABBiKBRiGA8ICBRAAGO8FwgIIEAAYgAQYogTCAggQABgWGB4YCsICBRAhGKABwgIHECEYChigAcICBBAhGBXCAggQABiJBRiiBMICBBAhGAqYAwCSBwQ2Ni40oAeL_wGyBwQ2Ni40uAfwLMIHBTU3LjEzyAcqgAgB&sclient=gws-wiz
Ken,
Four weeks ago, we made a written request to have an in-person face-to-face meeting with the California Department of Public Health ( CDPH ) administrative leadership. They refused the meeting. They said that they didn’t want to meet because they felt it was not justified or warranted.
During the FDA cheese event in April, the CDPH was merciless in their attack against “raw milk” and raw cheese in California. They advised the public to not drink raw milk even though the FDA issue was with raw cheese. CDPH went hog wild against raw milk. There was NO issue with raw milk and our CDFA regulators sold us that there was NO issue with raw milk. We were good.
It appears that CDPH is connected very closely with FDA partners. In California Raw Milk is legal and described in detail by the legislature in the Food & Ag code. CDPH is a California Department not a federal department.
Clearly you can see what I am describing here. There is a deep-seated hatred of raw milk even when it is legal and in the CA Food & Ag code. The CDPH did not make these same statements and advisories when consumers died after consuming Clover Hill pasteurized cheese just weeks ago.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/us/articles/clover-hill-dairy-expands-listeria-140043371.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuYmluZy5jb20v&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAIym2cu1LG6nUk8IZRY2pmfGbvXqODNBVQfXfSIwKeNxXOsPoQYtn_WHb5XrguBm_q2jqRLvcgooRIAQOnolCaym5ZcoKFPkvpgj51zrCn61clz9EMztfgqH47cW5g-tCEg3OQ0bi5tUwCpPkNTYdVCFzpYO6qHvUGUnx-yzJLZI
CDPH did not warn consumers to never eat dried powdered milk when CDI shipped salmonella worldwide two months ago. That cost hundreds of millions in lost products shipped 2.7 million pounds of dried powdered milk with Salmonella in it and it went everywhere.
https://www.msn.com/en-us/foodanddrink/foodnews/dry-milk-powder-tied-to-7-recalls-over-salmonella-concerns-so-far/ar-AA22HXEw
The news tracks the passion of the markets. This passion is linked to the disruptive nature of raw milk gaining ground when it was supposed to be dead and buried years ago. If it bleeds it leads. Pasteurized recalls are not news. They are common and expected. So-what if there is a death from pasteurized cheese? How dare those raw milk pioneers emerge and speak about BIOACTIVES that are destroyed in pasteurization…how dare they.
I don’t see any outrage from anyone about deaths from FDA guaranteed-safe pasteurized cheese.
One thing I have learned…there is no such thing as justice, balance or fairness. So, we pioneer and work in a world of injustice and unfairness. The only justice and peace we get is the grateful feedback we receive from delighted happy healthy customers. And that is enough for me.
That’s exactly why CDPH refused to meet and confer. They want no part of facing facts or reviewing data. To review facts would be an embarrassment and they would need to muster up some kind of apology. That is not going to happen. They refuse to allow us to meet with the Epidemiologist that totally screwed up in his assessment of WGS and made a bad link. In the end they had no links to our products, and we exposed that truth because of our technology and pathogen lab. They refused to apologize and refused to meet. The brave and ethical meet and confer and try to learn and make things better. That is the very last thing they want. We are fighting an entrenched culture of regulators and processors that hate to see continued losses in their market share. In the USA it is all about money and protecting it.
Owe…how I wish we lived in a world and a society where health mattered, facts mattered and profits were way down on the list of priorities. All of us in the Raw Milk community are working on that better world and our serious progress has really upset the current paradigm.
Gordon,
This mountain is being climbed by a whole team of raw milk sherpas that carry this heavy load. This community of well-trained raw milk farmers is growing and building a market that we all share. Speaking up and speaking the truth is highly disruptive… Utilizing a THERMO-FISHER PCR pathogen lab on farm is tantamount to milk-treason to the FDA and processors.
I stand with and for our community of producers and our shared growing group of happy and healthy consumers. The background noise is just that. Consumers give me my oxygen. We can climb anything with this fantastic support.